Tuesday, December 01, 2015

Judith Fitzgerald (November 11, 1952 - November 25, 2015)

Ms. Fitzgerald died
suddenly, but peacefully, at her Northern Ontario home on Wednesday, November
25, 2015 in her 64th year. Cremation has taken place. A Celebration of her Life
will be announced at a later date. Judith Fitzgerald was the author of
twenty-plus collections of poetry and three best-selling volumes of creative
non-fiction. Her work was nominated and short-listed for the Governor General's
Award, the Pat Lowther Award, a Writers' Choice Award, and the Trillium Award. Impeccable Regret was launched this year
at BookFest Windsor to critical acclaim. Judith also wrote columns for the Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star, among others."Her work is incredible...entirely inventive,
deeply moving, and universally attractive." – Leonard Cohen. For further
information, to make a donation, order flowers or leave a message of condolence
or tribute please go to www.paulfuneralhome.ca or call Paul Funeral Home,
Powassan, ON (705) 724-2024.

As I wrote in my recent review of her Impeccable Regret (Vancouver BC:
Talonbooks, 2015): “The author of some two dozen poetry titles going back more
than forty years, from Octave (1970)
to the most recent “Adagios Quartet” – published through Oberon Press as Iphigenia’s Song, vol. 1 (2003), Orestes’ Lament, vol. 2 (2004), Electra’s Benison, vol. 3 (2006) and O, Clytaemnestra!, vol. 4 (2007) –
Fitzgerald, through multiple award nominations and her ongoing critical work,
has been a consistent force in Canadian writing for decades. She has also
produced some of my favourite poetry overall; her Lacerating Heartwood (Toronto ON: Coach House Books, 1977) remains
one of my most reread poetry collections.”

Judith Fitzgerald was one of my favourite Canadian
poets, as well as being one of my earliest and most passionate supporters, and
both she and her work were very important to me in my twenties [see the piece I wrote here about a decade ago on one of her poems from Lacerating Heartwood]. We even brought her to town to read at TREE
(as she claimed, her “second last public reading”) on April 9, 1996, and
produced, through above/ground press, her chapbook 26 WAYS OF THIS WORLD: A Variation of Ghazals. Part of a longer
work-in-progress, D’Arc and de Rais,
about Joan of Arc and Gilles de Rais, I was always slightly disappointed she
abandoned that title for the final publication, appearing as 26 Ways Of This World (Ottawa ON: Oberon
Press, 1999). We kept an occasional correspondence that was furiously active
between extended silences. She was good enough to even occasionally send poems
for some of my schemes, including my Canadian issue of dusie. An email two weeks ago after my review of her Talonbooks was
the first I’d heard from her in a few years.

As a poet, critic and person in the world, she was
passionate, brilliant, forceful and sometimes difficult. I shall miss her.